Memories of another Beirut

The devastating explosion in Beirut this week, which once again bloodied the beautiful Lebanese capital, causing the tragic death of more than 150 people, injuring about 3,000 people and damaging infrastructure worth billions of dollars, was heartbreaking.

Even by the standards of battered Beirut, this must have been the most significant one-day damage inflicted on the hapless city, which has endured civil wars, Western occupation, Israeli invasion, air attacks, and mass murder over the years.

Video recordings taken by citizens from their apartments at various distances from the port left no doubt that this supply of ammonium nitrate was a disaster waiting to happen because it was not removed from the port and disposed of even after seven years of confiscation from the ship.

This devastation caused me the same pain as the images of the civil war on TV screens in the 1970s and the destruction caused by the Israeli invasion in 1982, and the mass killings by Falangist militants in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in 1983.

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While traveling from Pakistan to Lebanon through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the little boy's mind could not see the undercurrents.

I vividly remember a clip of Yasser Arafat giving an interview in a sandbag pose as Israeli missiles fly overhead before crashing into civilian areas, and he points to the sky and says with great irony in his voice “ " and they call us terrorists?”

The following year, as soon as the Israeli military, led by Ariel Sharon, lifted the siege of two Palestinian refugee camps that had been put in place to allow the phalanx militants to rampage unchecked and kill up to 3,500 mostly unarmed Palestinian (and Shiite) men, women and children, soul-destroying Images began to reach the outside world.

The investigation was supposed to find Sharon responsible for facilitating mass murder, but he faced no penalties other than having to resign as defense Minister. In fact, he later rose to the highest office in Israel and continued his efforts to destroy the Palestinians.

Lebanon's fragile balance of power, a mix of its population with a powerful Maronite President, Sunni Prime Minister, and Shiite speaker, imposed after the French occupation forces left in 1946, was under enormous pressure with the influx of Palestinian refugees after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.